1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a remote authentication system for monitoring and control of marked items.
2. State of the Art
Counterfeiting causes loss of profits to Brand Owners through loss of sales and loss of reputation. A major factor in dealing with the problem is that it is often very difficult for consumers to detect counterfeit items.
Faulty goods often need to be recalled. The problem here is that manufacturers can seldom trace where their goods are at the time they need to be recalled.
Theft in the form of shoplifting in particular is a well-recognised problem within all areas of commercial retail. It is difficult to discover whether a thief is leaving the premises with stolen property, and to distinguish between goods which have been paid for and those which have not.
Parallel Importing costs manufacturers by undercutting the prices they set for a local market. It may also render them legally liable when goods intended for country “A” do not meet the legal standards set in country “B” where the price is higher and being undercut by parallel imports.
Inventory Control requires manufacturers to know how much stock of their product remains unsold within the supply chain; it is often difficult to achieve such knowledge.
The present invention aims to alleviate problems in this field.
PCT patent application WO99/04364-A1, which describes a method of verifying the authenticity of goods, includes generating one or more random codes and storing the one or more random codes in a database. The goods are then marked with one of the generated random codes such that each of the goods contains their own unique random code. A reading and processing method is used to read the random code carried by a marked item and compare this code against those stored in the database. If the random code is found to be valid, the processing method can determine (from information held in a local database) whether or not that code has been read previously on another marked item, thereby verifying that the item is authentic (or otherwise).
There are a number of problems and disadvantages associated with the above described arrangement. Firstly if, for example, a set of random codes were either duplicated, or generated and obtained illegitimately, and applied to a batch of counterfeit goods, the codes would still be found by the processing method to be valid and, in many cases, not previously read, thereby verifying the authenticity of goods which are in fact counterfeit. This problem is exacerbated by the difficulties inherently associated with updating a local database with, for example, all non-local sales of branded goods in real time.
Further, PCT patent application WO99/04364-A1 describes a method of detecting diversion of goods from a desired channel or channels of distribution. This method involves the generation of encrypted codes (each having a random portion and a non-random portion), which are applied to a batch of goods so that each item has its own unique encrypted code. The encryption of the codes is effected by an encryption key, each encryption key being unique to a particular channel or channels. Subsequently, within a particular channel of distribution, the various goods are inspected and it is verified whether the decryption key used on the code successfully reproduces the non-random portion which is uniquely dedicated for the channel distribution in question. Consequently, the method identifies whether a diversion of goods has occurred if the decryption key does not match that used on the inspected goods.
In other words, if a channel should be using Public Key (PK) A and a product is intercepted with a PK code B mark on it, the use of the wrong PK indicates that the product has been diverted from its proper distribution channel. This makes it necessary to store a large number of PK's in the supply chain's computers.
Further, the requirement for treating different channels of distribution separately makes the scheme unnecessarily expensive to implement, and each implementation must be tailored separately. In addition, the reliance, of decryption at the retail end in particular implies the need for special readers or dedicated local computer technology, which takes the adoption of the proposed scheme relatively expensive.
The scheme described in PCT patent application WO99/04364-A1, may include a tracking or similar function which may be implemented by including in the non-random portion a secret encrypted portion containing tracking information. The codes may subsequently be decoded to determine tracking information, such as whether a tax has been paid.
There are, however, a number of disadvantages associated with this. Using the tobacco industry's requirements as an example, the government would have to create a large number of codes, keep them secure and issue them in advance of such payment—not to manufacturers (who might be in a position to exert true security but to those who have to pay duty (at the point of sale). This results in several weaknesses. Firstly, there are tens of thousands of retail outlets that would have to acquire the relevant equipment to adopt this scheme, and each of these outlets would have to be supplied with sufficient unforgeable codes to apply to the goods (they cannot be pre-applied because, until bought, no tax has been paid). Secondly, the routine sales areas must therefore adopt security measures which are likely to be extremely unrealistic. Thirdly, consider the case where France, Israel and South Africa (for example) want to adopt the scheme; this poses the problem of whose code to use to prove that the correct tax has been paid. Finally, the prior art proposal requires a huge number of different codes to be created in order to deal with different purposes.
PCT patent application WO99/04364-A1 mentions the use of one-way hash functions, but still requires the use of combination codes and PK's. In WO99/04364-A1, a “hash” message is reconstructed by using a readable field until a match is found. However, this is quite time consuming and laborious. In a preferred aspect of the present invention, there is included a database in which is stored the original codes alongside their “hash” values. This “field” can be indexed so that the matching of “hash” values is substantially instantaneous (less than one second in over a billion records), just as it would be if one were searching for the original code.